The willpower of women in Nigeria leads to victory

In Nigeria, as elsewhere across the world, women are disproportionately affected by corporate land grabs and deforestation. Two recent victories by Nigerian women reclaiming 13,750 hectares of land from a palm oil company (Okomu Oil Palms Plc/Socfin Group) and a rubber company (Iyayi Group) demonstrate how women are organizing to challenge corporate power and win concrete gains for their people.

In this current edition of Friends of the Earth International’s Real World Radio, Rita Uwaka, the forest and biodiversity program officer at Friends of the Earth Nigeria talks about a remarkable women-led campaign to fight corporate agri-business plantations in Edo State in the Niger Delta. During the interview Rita thanked the Friends of the Earth organizations that supported their efforts and the women who were pivotal in obtaining these victories:

Thanks to women, thanks to gender justice because we’re talking about people power. People power cannot happen without gender justice. So we’re saying gender justice can only be meaningful when there’s a space for women’s rights not to be undermined.

Listen to the full audio podcast here.

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Photo: Rita Uwaka, Friends of the Earth Nigeria 
Photo credit: Friends of the Earth International